A teacher who
was taken to a hospital near her school and placed under a mental health hold
lacks a viable legal claim against the hospital, the school district, or school
police, the Court of Appeal for this district ruled yesterday.

Div.
Seven ruled that all of Katia Julian’s causes of action were barred by
governmental immunity, because the laws that were allegedly violated cannot be
remedied by an award of damages, because the defendants were private persons
who could not be sued for civil rights violations, or because the alleged
conduct did not amount to a violation of law.

Julian was teaching math at Vista Middle School in Panorama City in 2012, when
she reported to the principal that a colleague “physically assaulted” her by
grabbing her hand as she tried to close the door to a classroom where a meeting
was taking place. She asked the principal not to report the incident to school
police, because of earlier incidents in which Julian had interacted negatively
with officers.

The
principal, Nidia Castro, later testified that she was concerned because she
didn’t want to cause Julian undue stress, but knew she had to report the
alleged incident. She said she contacted a superior and a district crisis
counselor, who told her to follow protocol and report the episode.

‘Slit Her
Wrists’

The
principal discussed the situation with school police, and a sergeant, Robert
Taylor, came to the school to question Julian. Before doing so, he spoke to the
crisis counselor, who said she feared for Julian’s mental health because Julian
had recently lost a lawsuit against the district and had told her best friend
she was going to “slit her wrists.”

According
to testimony, when Taylor and the principal approached, Castro explained that
Taylor was there to “take her report.” Julian ran down the hallway, said she
did not want to talk to Taylor, and began screaming, attracting a crowd of
students, employees and parents.

Taylor,
saying he was concerned about Julian’s mental state, called for paramedics.
When Julian began reaching into her bag, the sergeant testified, he handcuffed
her as she continued screaming and struggled with the officers.

School
officials asked Julian to cooperate with the paramedics, but said she merely
became angrier and angrier as they strapped her to a gurney and took her to
Mission Community Hospital a block away. One of the officers completed a form
for the hospital, requesting that she be placed on 72-hour mental health hold
pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code §5150.

She
was released the next day. She later sued the hospital, an individual doctor,
the Los Angeles Unified School District and its police force, and five
individual officers.

The
school defendants, she alleged, violated her state and federal constitutional
rights by, among other things, seizing and detaining her without probable
cause. The hospital defendants violated her civil rights by, among other
things, failing to conduct a proper assessment that would have resulted in the
rejection of the request for a hold, she claimed.

‘Bizarre’
Behavior

All
of the defendants prevailed, either on demurrer or on motion for summary
judgment. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frank Johnson ruled, among other
things, that the officers were immune because they were not “required to make a
definitive prognosis” of the plaintiff’s mental health and acted reasonably in
the face of her “bizarre” behavior.

As
for the doctor and hospital, Johnson said they were not acting under color of
law and thus could not be held liable for civil rights violations under state
or federal law.

Justice
John Segal, writing for the appeals court, said that all causes of action were
correctly dismissed, including those brought for violation of the
Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, of which §5150 is a part.

The
LPS Act, Segal explained, contains comprehensive provisions for the protection
of those who are, or are suspected of being, “mentally disordered.” Among other
things, the justice noted, it requires probable cause to believe that a person
is dangerous to himself or herself, or to others, before the person can be
detained and requires a professional assessment of an individual’s mental
health prior to admission to a facility.

Julian
claimed the defendants violated the LPS Act by holding her without probable
cause, by failing to conduct her assessment in the manner prescribed by the
statute, by not providing her with a written explanation of her rights. She
also claimed the doctor who assessed her was not qualified to do so, that there
was an impermissible delay in conducting the assessment, and that the doctor
prescribed medication contrary to the statute’s requirements.

While
the trial judge rejected those claims as inadequately pled, the appeals court
affirmed on an alternative ground, that the LPS Act, although it creates some
private causes of action, does not create one for any of the violations alleged
by the plaintiff. For those violations, Segal said, the act provides other
remedies, including revocation of a facility’s right to conduct evaluations and
treat committed persons, and referral for criminal prosecution.

With
respect to the school defendants, Segal said that the school district, as an
instrumentality of the state, and the school police, as an instrumentality of
the district, had sovereign immunity; and that the individual officers had
qualified immunity because their observations of the plaintiff’s behavior, and
the information they received from others, gave them probable cause to detain
her under §5150.

Julian’s
claims for violations of her state constitutional rights to freedom of speech
and petition and due process of law, Segal went on to say, failed because there
is no private right of action for those violations. Her privacy claim failed
because she lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy under the circumstances,
he said, while her claim for unreasonable search and seizure, assuming that
such a cause of action exists under state law, fails because the LPS Act
provides immunity for participants in the detention, evaluation, and treatment
process.